The day dawned in spectacular fashion.  As we enjoyed an early breakfast, making the most of the sunlight hours, we looked off the porch of our lovely Seven Springs condo into a forest from which the fog rose is beautiful billows.  Amber noticed what we thought was the final pink cloud of the sunrise, but really it was the SUN, which was pink and got bigger and rounder.  It was beautiful.  It was a wonderful omen.

As a side note, the race course at Seven Springs is the COOLEST racecourse EVER.  This year we only had two laps of the course however, where in the past we have had three.  This made me sad.  Therefore, it was clear that from the start this race was probably going to be tough.  Dave the Announcer commented at the start that this race was special because TWO national champions would be named—both the elite national champion would be determined as well as the top U23 rider of that pack would be acknowledged at the Espoir National Champion.  I whispered to Amber that he should maybe note that a certain situation could arise in which only ONE national champion would be crowned.  Then I waited for karma to strike me down for being overconfident.  Luckily for my track record in predicting the future, karma decided to look the other way today.

As we headed up the first climb of the first lap (there are two major climbs each time around the course), Lipton and our team, being the two teams with strong numbers, traded attacks trying to get a break to form.  Nothing seemed to stick, and the pack rolled to the second climb relatively intact.  At this point a large break actually broke off the front of the field, its most prominent feature being the intrepid Amber Rais, feared the world over for her astonishing cycling skill.  Lipton wasn’t quite content with the mix though, thus their leader, Kristen Armstrong (the winner of this race last year at the same venue) quickened the pace, narrowing down the field considerably.  By the top of the hill, she and I were together alone, which was not necessarily my favorite situation, because I knew that the strength of our team in this situation was our depth, and alone with the former national champ, I was depthless.

We rode together with about a constant gap of 20 seconds until mid-way up the first climb the second time around, when a chase group powered by Amber Neben containing the rest of the Webcor team, powered up to us.  As several attacks flew, the pace quickened until the group was winnowed down considerably.  At the crest of the hill, Kathryn responded flawlessly to an attack by Lipton’s Kori Seehafer, and they rocketed away down the descent together.  Kori and Kathryn built a decent gap by the base of the final climb, about a minute at its peak.  Unfortunately, Amber Neben, super-climber-extraordinaire was still with us, and as a solo rider, not too pleased about the break up the road.  She drove the pace until we came within 15 or 20 seconds of the dynamic duo at which point, they started beating each other up with uphill attacks.  Near the top of the hill, Kathryn sprung herself free of her breakaway companion.  This caused Kristin to attack the group, eventually bringing us up to Kathryn.  Christine then launched at attack with about 2km to go, which was covered by Kristin and Amber.  Going into the final kilometer, I went, but this was also covered.  Then, across a flat section, directly before the final 200m kicker, I, in Christine’s words “counter-attacked myself”, and then Kristin covered me, pulling ahead up the final climb.  I came around her right before the line, shocking myself as I won my very first sprint ever!  Not a bad place to win it!

What a wonderful week in my favorite Pennsylvanian resort of Seven Springs, and what a wonderful team to share it with!  HOORAY, Webcor has the stars and bars jersey once more!